on Cynicism...

[acroyear]

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Thoughts on the Inauguration:

The common misconception is that cynics are merely cold and negative, people who always find the worst rather than the good, but the truth is that every cynic is a frustrated idealist. Only someone who holds an ideal in mind can be bothered when they see that ideal undermined and ignored.

Comments

/agree

[eiredrake.livejournal.com]

I'm not cold and negative. I'm realistic. I face the facts and the facts are that people suck. People have always sucked. People will always suck. It's part of human nature to look out for one's own interests. The only real variance is that some people suck less than others and some times self interest and the public's interest happen to accidentally coincide. That's never going to change. That doesn't make me cold and negative it just means I've been paying attention. Even bigger of a problem is when you end up around some who's just a dick by nature and gets his jollies by making everyone else around them miserable. But that's a separate issue. I also agree with Joey from Friends - I don't believe in this illusion of altruism. There is no such thing. Nobody does anything for anyone without something in return - even if the thing you get in return is the 'warm fuzzies' for helping someone or some vague promise of heavenly brownie points after you die.

It's kinda like how in a Zombie film you get all these desperate selfish lonely people who in normal life wouldn't cross the street to piss on each other if one of them was on fire. But during Z-day they cooperate because on some base level even they understand that keeping the rest of the group alive at the very bare minimum means there's one more person for the Zombies to chew their way through before they get to you. Some times cooperation is in your best interest now matter how big a rampaging cocknugget you are.

And yes, I have ideals in mind. It is the same ideals that were laid down in the Constitution. Ideals that really are for the best benefit of everyone in the nation and anyone we come in contact with. Ideals that were so important that the people who sat down and wrote them down and were willing to risk everything they had including their lives to do so (still, not altruism - they were looking to better their own lot in life too). I have watched and ranted for the last decade watching people piss all over those ideals like a Saddam Hussein urinal cake. So again I say, yes I'm cynical. But it's not because I can't see the occasional bit of good in life. It's because I don't let the occasional bit of good in life blind me to the fact that at least 75%+ of life sucks ass for everybody - even the rich and powerful don't get everything they want they just don't have to struggle quite as hard as the rest of us.